Core Memory

We are back with another episode of Ashlee and Kylie gossiping about the latest in Silicon Valley.
First, a re-cap of our Alexandr Wang interview — his first real sit-down in eleven months — and what it actually revealed about Meta’s AI play. Wang seemed nervous hashing out the strategy in the studio, and we both keep circling the same puzzle: Meta has endless compute and top talent in Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, so why does the model still feel underwhelming?
We get into Eric Schmidt getting booed off a commencement stage at the University of Arizona, which becomes a longer conversation about the generational fury aimed at AI. Everyone Kylie’s age seems to hate it, but is it due to misinformation or legitimate anger about jobs and data centers? Ashlee admits he’s more confused by this moment than anything he’s covered in tech: the predicted Wall Street collapse hasn’t come, the models keep getting better, and the valuations still make no sense.
Then, the news that broke minutes before we hit record: OpenAI won the Musk lawsuit on statute-of-limitations grounds. We dig into whether OpenAI’s shift from open-source nonprofit to for-profit was an original sin or just the only way to pay for the compute. Also, Ashlee’s texts with Sam Altman being part of discovery?!
In more Musk news, Bloomberg reported that Musk’s xAI stiffed staff on the $420 they were promised for feeding their tax returns into Grok. One host would decidedly not trust a chatbot with their financials, and the other already has. We also get into the strange new bedfellows: SpaceX selling compute to Anthropic, a company Musk has long been philosophically against.
We even take you behind the scenes at Core Memory — so study up and watch our latest videos on Phantom Neuro and Starfront Observatories. Consider this your homework on mind-controlled arms and galaxy photography. Essay due on our desk by morning.
Don’t forget you could win tickets to the Weezer tour by leaving an amazing review for our podcast wherever you listen.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you like the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
OUR SPONSORS
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Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.


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As a freshman, Theo Baker signed up to write for The Stanford Daily on a lark. He thought it might be a fun way to spend some time when he wasn’t busy studying and coding. But then, he turned out to be quite good at reporting and tips started coming his way. One of these tips included information suggesting that there were inconsistencies and perhaps massive errors in past scientific papers tied to Stanford’s then-president Marc Tessier-Lavigne.
Despite warnings to stay away from the story, Baker pursued it and produced a string of pieces that did, in fact, show a long history of shoddy research publications linked to Tessier-Lavigne. The mighty Stanford president, who had been a towering force in the scientific community, resigned by the end of Baker’s freshman year.
Baker has now written a book about his experience and joined the podcast to discuss it.
How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University is three things: a rollicking account of Baker’s takedown of Tessier-Lavigne, an indictment of the start-up-obsessed culture Stanford has fostered, and something of a memoir, describing what it’s like to endure one of the more unusual freshman years any student will ever have.
The bulk of the book focuses on Stanford and what it has become, which is a meat market of young, brilliant minds being wooed by the venture capitalists seeking to acquire their talents. There are investors paying students tens of thousands of dollars for connections to other students and inviting the kids to their mansions and sex parties. All very wholesome stuff.
The book is fantastic. Baker is a rare talent. We had a wonderful conversation. You will enjoy it.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you like the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe

Last June, Meta pried Alex Wang away from Scale AI, the company he co-founded and ran, in a deal valued at $14 billion. Zuck could feel Meta fading in the AI race and decided that Wang was the rescue plan. He would work full-time at Meta, assemble a super team and hopefully make the company more competitive against the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet.
Wang has basically been in hiding ever since. He moved from San Francisco to the South Bay to be closer to Meta’s headquarters and has been working non-stop. Last month, the world saw the first fruits of the revitalized AI effort in the form of Meta’s new Muse Spark model. And now Wang is speaking for the first time about the model, Meta’s grand AI ambitions and all the happenings over the last year in an exclusive interview here on the Core Memory podcast.
Wang arrived at our studio sporting a mullet and a powerful whitetail deer camouflage shirt. He was in good spirits and tried his best to convince us that Meta can catch up to its rivals.
We hit on his personal beef with Sam Altman, Zuck delivering soup to AI recruits, the incredible pay packages Meta has been handing out, the vast amount of work Meta still has to do and the Meta AI hierarchy that includes all-stars like Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross and Shengjia Zhao, who seems to have blocked me on X for reasons I know nothing about.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you like the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
Enjoy!
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe

We’re in the midst of a new nuclear energy boom. Start-ups – both fusion and fission – abound, and the U.S. government has cleared the way to build again. Meanwhile, China is racing ahead with nuclear plans that dwarf those of the rest of the world combined.
As with any boom cycle, there is a lot of hype and a lot to understand if you want to get a handle on what’s real and what’s not. And so, we brought James Krellenstein onto the podcast. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Alva Energy and he’s sort of frightening in how much he knows about the nuclear industry. Like, really. You’ll see.
This episode runs long because we wanted to use it as a chance to go through the past few decades of history and really explain why the U.S. nuclear industry slowed and how the U.S. might fix the situation. We also wanted to explain how all these new technologies work and, of course, explore where China is heading.
Krellenstein is something of a contrarian and thinks many of the U.S. nuclear start-ups are misguided in their approach.
He’s also incredible to listen to. You will enjoy this one. I think it’s one of the best episodes we’ve ever done.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
This podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
We’ve also brought on a new sponsor. Welcome, SendCutSend!! They are an American manufacturing powerhouse and will help you make your metal parts with speed and skill. Core Memory subscribers can get a 15 percent discount on their next parts right here.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe

It is time to talk about robotic body parts.
Connor Glass, this week’s guest, has a company called Phantom Neuro, and it makes a human machine interface. By this, we mean a computing device that gets implanted in your body and lets you control a robotic limb with your mind.
The first people using this technology are amputees. If, for example, you’ve lost your arm, you can get outfitted with a robotic prosthetic coupled with Phantom’s implant and then make your prosthetic move by thinking about what you’d like to do with it.
Phantom’s technology competes in places with implants from the likes of Neuralink and Synchron. The big difference is that nothing needs to be implanted in the patient’s brain. Phantom’s implant goes near the site of the amputation and links the robotic prosthetic with motor neurons to convey signals back and forth from the brain. It’s a simpler, faster surgery.
Where this technology is heading in the future is another story. Glass can see a day when humans have elective amputations to become, well, cyborgs.
We get into this weird and possibly wonderful future on the episode, along with Glass’s backstory and much more detail on how Phantom’s implant works.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
This podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe